


Permanent Destination

by transfixme_quite



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Gen, Reichenbach Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-12
Updated: 2012-08-12
Packaged: 2017-11-11 23:40:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/484180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transfixme_quite/pseuds/transfixme_quite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life doesn’t happen in slow motion, not really, but perception is a weird thing. Time isn’t a constant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Permanent Destination

If a penny and a bowling ball were dropped from the same height, which would land first? John never paid much attention in math class, though he did enough to pass with decent grades. This question, though. There was something about a vacuum and friction in the air he couldn’t quite remember. Sherlock probably knew. And John would have asked him too, if his mouth wasn’t hanging open, staring at the sky. With the screechingly loud silence, he wasn’t sure Sherlock would have even heard him if he tried.

Life doesn’t happen in slow motion, not really, but perception is a weird thing. Time isn’t a constant. That general idea he’d heard in college stuck with him, though the details were a blur now, much like the blur he was watching that seemed to hover forever, yet disappeared just as quickly as he’d seen it. He dropped his phone and ran. He ran and ran. Just how wide was this street? Staring at the sky. Deafening silence. Cracking, sloshing thwump. Running.

_No._

Sherlock probably could tell John the speed of which would hit the ground first just by observing. He was kind of like a machine sometimes. _Oh God, no._ John would probably say the bowling ball. It was heavier, common sense, yes? Answer correctly, no thinking required, hope the teacher moves on to another student to ask why.

How many bowling balls does a person weigh? Eight? Nine? Would they fall at nine times the speed of a bowling ball? _Please, he’s my friend._ Not a machine.

Bloody clumps, sickening thwump. Not even in the war had John heard such a noise. Was the noise amplified by the silence, or the fact that it was Sherlock? Was hearing relative as well? John fell to his knees in the arms of strangers, watching Sherlock’s body being wheeled away. He looked up again, almost sure he’d see Sherlock above him, smiling down at him smugly. “You didn’t really think I’d jump, did you?” He might say. Sherlock wasn’t up there. John thinks a bowling ball might have been in his throat, because just then, something unnaturally heavy hit his stomach.

_If you were dying, in your last few seconds what would you say?_   “Goodbye, John.” _Please God, let him live._

**Author's Note:**

> "Character death". It's Reichenbach, of course there is. xD


End file.
